A friend with whom I often trade opposing points of view sent an article my way today about how offensive it is that our governments have taken the Christ out of Christmas.  The article he forwarded was written by John Bennett.  Here are a few samples from the article:

“Maintaining Christmas is part of preserving the culture that gave us almost everything that we have worth keeping. The whole name-changing charade is neurotic because it forces people to pretend that our majority culture is not what it actually is.”

Later: “Just follow the logic of his statement. We want to be inclusive, which means embrace diversity. Therefore we are going to express disapproval for the majority culture that made this nation great, which is what attracted those diverse people in the first instance.”

“Make no mistake about it, those who rip Christmas out of public life are duplicitous and exploitative, no matter what they claim their victim status to be, and no matter how noble their motives.”

My reply to the friend who sent the article:

The plea for logic and call to taking offense is rather silly, (my friend).

Anyone of reasonable intelligence who has some sense of logic will not buy the picture the vast majority of organized Christianity paints of an all-Loving God whose wrath we should fear because He may condemn us to eternal torture in Hell.  Most Christianity, while it will not admit it, worships a god that is severely schizophrenic.  And these beliefs are based on the words of corrupted men with a devious agenda who lived centuries after Christ died.  The evidence is quite clear that the Catholic Church has suppressed much of the beauty of the original Bible in the name of manipulating their flock.  There may not be any crime more severe than this.

One has to be deluded to subscribe to a god that can be so nasty.  And subscription to such a god is totally without logic and totally without foundation.

The tactics of militant Muslims so condemned by most of Christianity are the same tactics the Catholic Church has used over the years to grow its flock of sheep.  This label of Catholicism's followers may seem harsh, but is apt: following blindly, mostly because of fear, is what sheep do.

It is easier to forget that and just point the finger at the misguided Muslims who want to blow themselves and others to smithereens to earn lasting sexual privileges with seventy-odd virgins in the afterlife. Some conveniently forget the Inquisitons and the Crusades, condoned by the Church, during which men, women and children were brutalized and killed for their religious convictions or lack of them.

It is so easy to forget the unconsious means by which the Catholic Church has advanced its cause, right up to the present day times when they would rather shuffle around hundreds or thousands of child-abusing priests to molest more kids than fess up and kick the perverts out.  Add that to the current Vatican banking scandal and you realize that we are witnessing the death of a very corrupt institution....if people simply are willing to see the truth and respond with integrity.

Bennett labels those who are complaining about governments’ not supporting Christmas-labeled events as “duplicitous and exploitative”.  Isn’t it ironic that the entire documented history of the Catholic Church’s leadership has been exactly that.  Anybody caring to do even brief research from sources outside the church itself will see this.  Most of their followers would rather not look.

We are now living out the consequences of allowing particular religious influence being condoned by government, even promoted by governments.  Those who identify us as a "Christian nation," tend to exclude those who are not Christian.  At the very least, these people like to pretend that membership in their church earns them some extra slack on judgement day.  This plays into the hands of those financial and religious forces who want to lead us around like sheep.  Many married to their religion have gladly complied with thier church's doctrine even when they don't believe in it.   Compliance here is a product of their fear.

Who wants to live in fear?  Do you?   That is the yoke you place on your shoulders when you subscribe to the vast majority of what we call Christianity today.  More and more are choosing the courage and trust to walk away from such insanity.

It has been proven in conflicts over the centuries, from boardrooms to battlefields: The way to conquer people is to divide them: Christian versus Muslim, fundamentalist Christian versus liberal Christian.   And those of the Christian faith cannot seem to find a way to unify themselves, to create commonality: Today there are over 35,0000 demominations calling themselves Christian: Divided and Conquered. Like our behavior in our political arenas, our choice to fight each about religion keeps us weak.  The purpose of any worthy religion would be to unify and empower. The vast majority of religion today---all of the big ones---do exactly the opposite. 

The Bennett article stirs people up to take offense.  As a culture we are learning the hard lesson that it does not make sense to take offense about how other people label you or your beliefs.  Taking offense is stupid, ignorant.  Under the Bush administration, all the Christian organizations got favored status and lots of money.  They kept the word "religion" out of it; they called the money handouts to religous organizations "Faith-Based." Some of the rules our often-misguided forefathers made that had to do with keeping church and State separate were good ones.  Along with the corrupt bankers and money barons, maybe the biggest problem in our world today is (most of) organized religion and the sheep who either abuse "non-believers" or who take offense that others do not want our governments promoting such a foolish, destructive set of beliefs.

The most pious of big religions' leaders often voice their offense at the words of others.  They judge.  They condemn.  Just like their god.

Let me be clear: I apppreciate the greatness of Jesus; His pure message is a beautiful teaching and His example has been abused and distorted by most of the leadership of the major Christian religions.  This is not a judgment, but a simple observation.  Just look at what has been expunged from the Bible over the centuries and you will see clearly that what was taken out was spiritually empowered.  Most organized religion wants to vest all power in their organization...and little, if any, in their followers.

Sure, there is a part of many of us who grew up with traditional Christian religion that regrets that Christmas has become for so many more about excuses for excesses in food and alcohol, and that it has become for many something that has little to do with Christ.  We might miss seeing the Christmas label on so many things this time of year.  The unfortunate truth is that the leadership of the vast majority of Christianity’s leaders have polluted Christ’s word to such a thorough and destructive extent that it may more spiritually profitable for all of us to find other ways to honor the Christlike in all of us.

It starts with tolerance, forgiveness and awareness of what is really important in life, and that is simply to love each other and ourselves more ruthlessly.  We are waking up to this possibility for our true redemption. Fighting each other, taking offense at others' beliefs, worrying about how others judge you...these are all so self-destructive.

Let's really wake up; let's choose to love one another.

From the perspective of anyone who is paying attention, the world seems to be going into the tank.  We are being brought to the brink of destruction by the institutions we have allowed to run our lives.

Our governments are controlled by corporations.  We let big business poison our foods.   Local governments are allowed to poison our water supplies with the main ingredient in rat poison, fluoride, or with fluorosilicic acid.  We let farmers “hormone-ize” livestock for profit enhancement purposes, without listening to what the scientists tell us about how those hormones are messing up our moods.  We let our government go to war with other countries’ governments preemptively, as if an initial attack is morally justifiable.

Drug makers tell us the solutions to our problems can be found in little pills.

Religious leaders implore us to choose their god for current and eternal salvation.

Governments pretend that they can solve our social ills, and that they can make us safer by wasting our soldiers' lives and a trillion dollars of your money on war with two small countries on the other side of the ocean.  Meanwhile, we let 10,000 people starve to death every day in our world community.

How stupid are we?

Most of our religious leadership practices the opposite of what they preach, arrogantly claiming superiority over other religious entities while reminding the faithful of their god’s unhappiness with our collective inferiority, unworthiness and damnable behavior.

Our food producers feed us poisons, approved by our governments: health-killers like aspartame, brain toxins such as monosodium glutamate and tension creators like excess sugars in darn near every processed food.   Without a care as to the long-term effects of genetically modifying foods and seeds, producers rush these products to market in the name of profit and control, humanity be damned.

Our medical institutions bleed us while withholding low-cost, effective modes of treatments and stifling the promotion of natural, more humane products.  While nature created many simple products loaded with health benefits---hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and water, to name two---our governments and medical institutions conspire to keep the great power of these gifts to us under wraps because there is not enough profit in selling them.

Most popular media lies to us or give us half-truths while they concurrently provoke us to fight with each other, to judge, to damn, and to be fearful that there is absolutely nothing we can do step off the path to destruction or total despair.

Our experience will soon be so beyond denial that we will be forced to surrender to either our more powerful loving nature or to the essentially minimal forces that we have empowered by collectively staying asleep.

Institutions as the Mirror of Ego

The corrupt behavior of the institutions we wish we could trust serves a very important purpose in our communal evolution:  Our governmental, religious and corporate institutions are a microcosm of the human ego as we collectively identify with it today.

What is the purpose of this mirror?  It is to show us ourselves by the unproductive examples that stare us in the face every day.    Sooner or later we will get it: we will drop the false power of ego and embrace a more loving way of being.  One way of doing this is to choose to be aware of how we treat each other and how our institutions are treating us.  We learn and grow by paying attention to what is in front of us, and by then responding in a more loving, truly productive way.  That we allow our institutions to treat us so poorly is an indication of our sense of collective sense of unworthiness or weakness.  Let’s snap out of it.

Collectively, we still think we are the ego.  We see power as the ability to manipulate, deceive, dominate or enslave.  We always want more of some things and less of something else, never allowing ourselves to be content with what we have.  This, too, is the way of life for those who control our governmental, corporate, financial and religious institutions.  They want to control everything, no matter the price paid by the larger body of humanity.

We wear masks, just like our institutions.  Our government pretends to be the greatest benefactor on the planet when it is actually its most ruthless controller and imperialist.  It likes to tell us that we are the richest nation in the world, but the truth is that we’d have to sell every square inch of this country to pay our national debt.

Our religions wear the mask of love, while most of them promote divisiveness and spiritual neediness.  Our silly addiction to religion has the world in lethal, potentially apocalyptic conflict.  Despite this, our leaders continue to encourage us to exercise the “freedom” to promulgate philosophies that arrogantly suggest adherence to one of several“true” religions as some kind of ticket to either worldly prosperity, a better seat in heaven or at least escape from an eternity that would otherwise be spent in a burning pit.

Our institutions fear the loss of power.  Discontent on the part of the citizenry or flock of “sheeple” is met with entrenchment and new rules for control.  What does your ego do when you make a loving resolution to shift out of some unconscious behavior?   Ego wants control, at any price.  It doesn’t matter who gets hurt, just that control is increased or maintained.

Ego says: “An eye for an eye”.  Gandhi rightly observed that living that makes the whole world blind.

Like the ego, our institutions prioritize loveless power.  While they are willing to subvert morality in the name of control, the ego-controlled citizen makes it important to have a bigger TV than the folks next door, or a shapelier girlfriend—even if she’s got to have plastic body parts.  We have been indoctrinated to think that what we have, how we look, and who we can control are more important than being who we really are.

The perverted ego that so many see as what defines them places no practical value in love, seeing it as a facet of powerlessness.  We either avoid love altogether or we approach it schizophrenically:  When it comes to love, we tell each other: “Come closer further away.  I am intrigued but afraid”.  We gussy-up our words to our love partners when this is what we really mean: “I’ll love you as long as I can control you” or “I’ll love you as long as you pay all the bills”.  And we tell ourselves: “It’s good to have a lover waiting in the wings in case my main relationship dissolves.”  This is the way of the ego.

What is the alternative to allowing our institutions to dominate and enslave us?  The answer is the same one that would apply to understanding the alternative to identifying with the egoic mind.  The answer is a “four-letter word”, to some: Love.

Love exerts its true power when we identify with the heart. It takes trust and courage to make the shift out of ego identification.  Like the “Little Engine That Could” shifting into identifying yourself as some combination of your heart and soul is simply a matter of belief creating reality.

Those attached to ego extend the reign of fear.  Embracing Love is the ultimate solution to the often apparent chaos of the world.

Change is happening at light speed.  Each time someone makes the shift into a life committed to love, the world evolves just a little bit more, becoming a more loving place.  As more and more do it, we take larger and larger strides toward a world in harmony.

Our institutions have been showing us the futility of clinging to worldly power as they mirror the stupid ego for us.  This is a gift.  If collectively we refuse to soon unwrap and productively apply this gift, we will destroy ourselves and our planet.

I’m betting on us to survive and thrive, to become the loving world that is our destiny.  Spiritual empowerment will spell the end of anyone feeling terror.

Each response to every experience makes a difference.  You make a difference.  It’s a revolution that we are in the middle of right now, one of Love.  The “weapon” of Love is more powerful than all the bombs and guns on Earth.  As we collectively come to realize the power of Love, any worldly forces aligned against it will fade away.

That’s the way it will be.  All we have to do is to collectively choose the true power to more and more often  lovingly be with what is.  If love is not at the foundation of something, then that something has no real power.  Artificial power is temporary and spiritually draining.

What brand of power are you claiming?

Push your pause button and consider.

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